ArcScene 10.1 near non-functional with TIN (face elevation)

[MikeFutrell]

ArcScene: I upgraded 10 to 10.1 and now TINs are virtually non-functional when symbolizing by face elevation. TINS of even just a few faces, created in 9.x, 10, or 10.1, give that all familiar "Not Responding" for minutes then does not display correctly. Forget about turning the model. Symbolizing by wireframe, aspect, or slope seems to work ok (but elevation is 99% of use). In 10.0 even my large TINs worked fine. So now I have a lot of broken non-functional work. Even simple v10.0 SXD files won't even open!! [no other hardware/software changes were made]

Anyone else experiencing this? Do I need to roll back to 10.0?
Thank you,
Mike

[GeospatialTechnology]

I've had a look through the issues addressed with SP1 and it looks like this issue isnt one of them

http://downloads.esri.com/support/downloads/other_/ArcGIS101sp1-issues.htm

[EricRice]

Yes I also still have the same issue even though I was told it would be solved in SP1. Come on ESRI!!

Hi Mark,

I had a look at the NIM and I don't see your name connnected to it in any manner. Did you have an incident with Esri Support that was supposed to be linked to this NIM? I'm curious who told you it would be solved in SP1. That wasn't even remotely possible. The NIM was submitted to Dev on 9/26/12, roughly 4 weeks before SP1 shipped to the public. SP1 was basically done before the NIM was submitted. It was being tested, certified, and a whole slew of other processes involved in getting it out the door. We don't just finish writing code, install it, then ship it to you guys without it being tested thoroughly. There can be two months from the time we finish a service pack, till the time you can download it.

I'm not on the team responsible for this NIM, but I know they are aware of the problem. In addition, the User Advocacy Group has flagged this NIM as High Priority (only a couple days after it was submitted) and they are requesting a fix at the next available SP (SP2). We know this NIM is impacting certain ATI card users, and that it needs a speedy resolution. We thank you for your patience.

Temporarily, you could convert your TIN to a raster and use the raster in ArcScene. I know it doesn't look the same, but typically you would be draping imagery/features on the surface anyway and not actually visualizing the TIN. Technically, you don't need any elevation layer in the scene; you can still set other layers to use the TIN/raster for baseheights.

Best Regards,
Eric

[TiborLieskovský]

Hi I can report same problem (nVidia works, ATI no). For us it is little bit problematic, because we are teaching at university and few of our "excersise" are focused to TIN and ArcScene, now we are not able to works with students. Please do you have some solution, or workaround. Thanks in advance

[PiotrMaciag]

Hello

Problem with TIN on ATI graphics card is not only in ArcScene. It's also in ArcCatalog on Preview -> 3D View. TINs works only in 2d.

ArcGIS 10.1

ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5470
AMD Athlon II P320

Regards
Peter

[GIS-Cambria]

@erictrice commented that converting a TIN to raster for use in ArcScene might work. I have an ATI card so that may be part of the issue. However, I will caution against working with large elevation rasters in ArcScene. My experience is that ArcScene will attempt to render a raster dataset and then hang up at about 34-37%. My data is coming from SQL/SDE with 1 meter pixels (3.2ft) covering about 700 square miles. For what it's worth I have found that both rendering large sized raster elevation files and rendering large volumes of LAS data as an LAS dataset simply choke ArcScene.

It seems to me that raster elevation display was an issue with AGIS10 and still a problem with 10.1. My suspicion is that about this time (AGIS 10) a decision was made whereby ArcScene became an in-memory application and thus introduced a problem with big files. Read the section about ArcScene in this link. http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//00q8000000sv000000
While working with in-memory analysis is great in theory, working with county wide analysis is stymied here. This is especially troublesome when attempting to use a surface elevation raster in the display or as input for either creating subsurface features or more detailed DTM information like buildings and tree canopy. It also seems to affect other geoprocessing tasks too. I've tried to run LAS to raster tools which processed for nearly 2 weeks before getting a result. I'm half afraid to attempt much more.

Please Esri, take the processing of ArcScene out of being a primarily memory based application and give it access to the horsepower that it once had. Perhaps a marriage of ArcScene and ArcGlobe into one product is to be considered too. But for now at least help us to work with what we�??ve got�?�

[EricRice]

Hi Steve,

The product documentation cautions against using large rasters with ArcScene in the link you provided. It's subtle, but there.

"ArcScene is geared for those with smaller spatial datasets who want to examine a defined study area."

"Since ArcGlobe is designed to be used with very large datasets....."

"ArcScene loads all data into available memory and uses paging files if necessary. This is one of the reasons why ArcScene is optimized for smaller study areas with less amounts of data."

For 1 meter data at 700 sq miles of extent you should use ArcGlobe probably. ArcScene has been an in-memory application since I started here at 9.0 and was probably that way since its inception. The issue is not so much related to the application loading things into memory as much as it's related to the application being 32 bit and subject to real limits on the amount of memory it can allocate. 64 bit applications will change this and improve performance (with large data) because more RAM can be snatched up. The application loading items into memory should not be confused with "in-memory analysis" which I would equate to using geoprocessing tools using an in-memory workspace. They are totally separate. Note, in-memory workspaces did not support raster data until 10.1.

In terms of LAS Dataset performance I have worked with hundreds of millions of data points in ArcScene using the new LAS Dataset and the performance is what is expected in most cases. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that your source .las files are not local to your machine and neither is the LAS Dataset. If true, try creating another LAS Dataset with local .las files; I bet you'll see a big improvement. You should check out these help topics.

LAS dataset considerations - particularly the section on "Dimensions and size of LAS files".
"For best performance, the client machine should have direct access to data on local internal drive, not across network or slower external drives."
LAS dataset scalability
An overview of displaying LAS datasets in ArcGIS

Also, if you're just looking for a raster to be created from your source .las files, have you considered a Mosaic Dataset? It supports .las files as direct inputs (just like rasters) and will rasterize the points on the fly using user defined filters such as Class Code and Return type. The two week result you got (presumably over your network) could have been obtained in less than an hour using the mosaic dataset with your .las files. Additional time would be required to build overviews, but still faster than two weeks. See the LAS to Raster function which the Mosaic Dataset uses to produce the raster on the fly.

Best,
Eric

[JennyAxelrod1]

Eric this is a serious problem. I cant even get the tutorial files to work in 10.1. These are files that I installed from the installation set, so they should work perfectly. Its not a size of the file issue. Arcscene hangs no matter what I do and I have my virtual memory set at the highest possible to give it plenty of room to work. Please tell me we arent going to have to wait months for this to work, my project is time sensitive as are others. I am having the same problem rendering, loading files, and even trying to shut it down. It takes over my machine and its a new machine!

[LenDesson]

I too have noticed at 10.1 ArcScene is having problems with TINs that used to display fine.
Some will take a long time to load, other times just trying to change the symbology of the TIN will crash ArcScene.

[PavanYadav]

Greetings,
I work with the Esri User Advocacy Group, and I wanted to inform you that as soon as the TIN display problem (NIM085208) was brought to our attention, we started working toward its fix. We have a fix now which has been incorporated into the code. I am fairly confident that this fix will be incorporated into the upcoming release 10.1.2, which is planned to be available in March.

Eric this is a serious problem. I cant even get the tutorial files to work in 10.1. These are files that I installed from the installation set, so they should work perfectly. Its not a size of the file issue. Arcscene hangs no matter what I do and I have my virtual memory set at the highest possible to give it plenty of room to work. Please tell me we arent going to have to wait months for this to work, my project is time sensitive as are others. I am having the same problem rendering, loading files, and even trying to shut it down. It takes over my machine and its a new machine!

@Jenny, are you experiencing the problem described in NIM085208? Please note that NIM085208 is specific to ATI Graphic Cards and TINs.

Regards,
Pavan

Pavan Yadav | Raster/3D Development Technical Lead
User Advocacy Group | Support Services

[TullyWilson]

I'm having the same issue. My video card is an ATI Radeon HD 2400XT. My work around was to create a layer file with the TIN and change the symbology from an elevation face to some other face display since just the elevation face was causing the problem. Since I don't really need to see the elevation face, this works fine.